IBM's Next Five in Five

(Nanowerk News) IBM's " Next Five in Five" list is a view on five innovations that will change how people around the world work, play and live over the next five years. Here are IBM's predictions:

1) We will be able to access healthcare remotely, from just about anywhere in the world

2) Real-time speech translation—once a vision only in science fiction—will become the
norm

3) There will be a 3-D Internet

4) Technologies the size of a few atoms will address areas of environmental importance

5) Our mobile phones will start to read our minds

These five innovations were selected based on projects in our Research labs, research conducted by our business think-tank, and ideas pooled from more than 150,000 people from 104 countries who took part in an online brainstorming session called “IBM InnovationJam.”

Item 4 deals with carbon nanoptubes used for water desalination and nanostructure fabrication used in making better solar cells.